


Louder Than All Your Pain

by honorthevanishing



Category: All For One (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:44:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6549214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honorthevanishing/pseuds/honorthevanishing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorothy shows up on Alex's doorstep after the confrontation with Miller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Louder Than All Your Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Some thoughts on how I'd like their reconciliation to go. Probably will get thrown out by canon soon, but here we are. I own nothing you recognize.
> 
> Title from "Break the Cycle" by You+Me 
> 
> Trigger warning: emotional abuse, homophobic slurs

You don't see Portia after the breakup. Hell, you don't even know anything's wrong between them until the chapter meeting Sunday night. They're sitting on opposite sides of the room. Portia looks like a fawn with a broken hind leg and Ariana is clenching her jaw so hard her pulse is visible. And they thought it was icy between you and Miller.

You don't laugh, or feel any sort of vindication, just watch them out of the corners of your eyes as they avoid eye contact with each other. It's odd, seeing people you once loved after falling out with them. One day you're intimate with all their paradoxes, gifted with all the weird little cogs in their machinery, and the next you can only see what everyone else sees, as if their complexity was an intricate illusion woven just for you. You look at Ariana and all you see spiky hair and a bad attitude. It feels like the night she cried herself out in your lap because her mother had called her a dyke is just a dream. You look at Portia and you can't see her 4.0 or what a shark she is at Monopoly behind those big eyes and ridiculous sweaters.

You look at them and you don't feel anything. You know you should, but since the day you slammed the door to Dorothy's apartment everything has gone still inside you. When Anton left, in the six years you thought he was _dead_ , the grief inside was like a neutron star. The gravity crushed your windpipe. Now you are just cold emptiness, and the part of you that bears some semblance to the Alex everyone knows, the Alex you wish you were, is throwing up red flags like a frantic matador. Even pettiness, the sticky wash of glee and horror that the sight of your (former) best friends in tatters should bring you, would be something. 

The chapter meeting goes on in the background, and you listen to every word carefully. You wouldn't be able to repeat them back to anyone if they put a gun to your head. Ariana's out of the room like a shot when it ends. Portia flinches as she blows right past her. She looks over at you, and you don't. You hold her gaze as she searches you for something--comfort, curiosity, a mutual please-don't-leave-me-alone--but you have nothing of that to give anyone, and Portia ducks her head, nods, and doesn't come any closer. 

Your sisters shuffle out, and Jeanne and Anne walk off into a different part of the house discussing...things, and honestly if you could still feel badly for people it would be them, having to deal with the fallout of all your mistakes. True to your word, you haven't told them what Dorothy and her idiot brigade have done. If the moral high ground is the only thing you're left with after this debacle, then you'll be damned if you give it away.

You're exhausted by the time you get home, and you're trying to get through the last pages of your Rushdie reading when you hear a knock on your door. You let out a long breath through your nose, and stand up to answer it. You're going to kill Portia, and you open the door to tell her off when your heart all but stops. It's not Portia. It's much worse than that. It's Dorothy, and she's in tears, holding a flash drive. You stare, too livid to speak. She does.

"You were right about Anton."

"I know."

"I should have listened to you."

"Yes, you should have."

She's not expecting you to be this blunt, but she takes it in stride. The look on her face tells you she thinks she deserves it, and right now she does. She brandishes the flash drive again.

"I didn't--he didn't seem--at first he wasn't..."

You close your eyes and take in another breath through your nose. You can feel yourself softening, almost against your will. You hate that she does this to you, but you think it's not just her. You  _remember_ this part.

"It's not your fault."

It comes out of you in a whisper, desperate. She laughs bitterly.

"No, it, uh, it is. It really, really is. I ruined everything."

"I believe that. I mean it's not your fault that he tricked you. He's...very good at what he does. He's had a lot of practice."

"But I had you, and you were suspicious of him and I didn't listen. God, I should have taken your side from the beginning but I was selfish and impatient and blind..." She trails off and stifles a sob, looks down at her feet. She doesn't look back up, and you lean more heavily against the door.

"What are you doing here, Dorothy."

"I didn't know where else to go."

"And what did you think, I would pity you? Pick you up and make everything better again? Play mom?!"

"No!" She looks like you've slapped her, terror bright in her eyes before her face completely crumples. "No one else knows how this  _feels_ , and I--I didn't want to be alone."

You look her in the eyes for a long minute, and swing the door fully open.

"Then I guess you'd better come in."

Whatever she was expecting from you, it clearly wasn't this because she blinks stupidly a few times before following you over the threshold and hovering awkwardly in the doorway. You walk over to your kitchenette and start filling the electric kettle with water from the tap.

"You can sit down, Dorothy."

She looks between the table and the couch and then back at you and you shrug. It doesn't matter, and she lowers herself gingerly onto the couch. She sits on her hands, shoulders hunched. She's expecting a dressing down of Biblical proportion, an "I told you so" vindicated by six years of abuse and a flash-drive full of proof. She looks startled when you hand her a ceramic mug filled with tea and plop a bottle of honey down onto the coffee table. You sit next to her and sip your own.

"Drink," you say softly, "It's no good if it's cold."

She obeys, and does her level best to hide the face she makes as she swallows. You'd always thought she'd be more of a black tea girl, but chamomile is calming and the last thing either of you need is caffeine. You hide the tiniest smile inside your next sip. Looks like you aren't entirely without pettiness, after all.

"You can put honey in it, if it's too bitter."

"No, this is..." She takes another sip, "fine. This is fine."

You raise your eyebrows.

"Drinking bitter tea to punish yourself isn't penance, Dorothy. It's childish."

She blushes before grabbing the bottle of honey and pouring what must be four tablespoons of it into her tea, stirring it furiously before taking another sip. Better. You drink in silence for a few minutes, and after a while she begins to calm down. She sits back against the couch, running her thumbs around the rim of the cup. 

"I thought you'd be angrier at me."

You take a long sip.

"I'm furious with you."

"Then wha...?" She raises her tea instead of finishing the question. You sigh, drain the last of yours and set it down on the table. You clench your jaw and begin.

"When Anton and I were dating, he convinced me that no one could no about him. Not my friends, not my priest, especially not my police officer father. At first it was exciting, very Romeo and Juliet which, yeah, should have tipped me off in the first place. But I was naive, and it made me feel special, like I was the only one who got to know a very important secret. I didn't see that he was just trying to keep anyone who might have intervened or shown me how fucked up the whole thing was from doing just that. He convinced me to do...things. Some of which were less than legal. He liked to hold those over my head when I would argue with him. He'd say I had no right to judge him because I was just as bad."

"It's amazing what you can do with just a little spoonful of meth," she murmurs, looking absolutely stricken.

"I don't think I want to know what that means," you say tiredly. "He made me so ashamed of myself, so scared to get caught even after he was gone that I never told anyone about him, even after I thought he was dead." Your throat feels tight, and you wipe your eyes. "God, I mourned his stupid ass for  _years_. I even lit a candle for him on his birthday until I couldn't do it anymore." You wipe your eyes again, but it's no good.

"Alex..." She reaches out for your hand, but then draws back. Which is good, you don't think you can have anybody touch you right now.

"My point is," you say, gritting your teeth against your own ridiculous emotions which have decided to come back all at once, "is that I was alone, and grieving, and guilty, and back then I'd have given anything to have someone be what I can be for you."

Dorothy just stares, transfixed, tears falling silently as you press on. 

"You didn't deserve what he did to you. He hurt you, and furious or not, I'm not going to let you carry that by yourself."

She wipes her eyes, and sets her mug down on the table. 

"God, I treated you like such shit. I am so, so sorry." You nod, smiling weakly. "Alex, you know you didn't deserve what he did to you, either, right?"

Your face crumples, and you turn sharply away from her. She's still talking, and each word is unraveling you faster.

"...what he did to you was so much worse, and I'm not trying to compare or anything because you can't, but you are so strong and..." Her hand is on your shoulder now, and that's it because you are shattering under her touch. You cover your face with both hands and  _sob_ the way you never have, choked, hiccupy things because that guilt has been pulling at you like a broken ankle all this time and it _hurts_  and her arms are around you. Anchoring you. Undoing you.

It feels like you cry for hours but you know in reality it's probably only twenty minutes before you shudder, wipe your face, and try to sit up. Her arms are still around you, and she's stroking your hair, murmuring over and over how sorry she is. You wrap your arms around her in turn, and manage to choke out that you forgive her. Because you do. You're wrung out, you have no room in you to hold on to anything, and she sags with relief. 

The room seems about ten degrees colder when she lets go, and you sit side by side, wiping your eyes before you laugh. 

"What a mess."

She runs a hand through her hair.

"I don't even know where to go from here."

"Bed."

She snorts, and you crack a smile.

"Seriously, sleep will make everything seem a lot less earth-shattering. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted."

You stand and disappear into your room for a moment. She's rubbing her eyes as you come back, and jumps as you drop a pillow and blanket into her lap.

"It's a long walk back," you say by way of explanation as you pick up the mugs and drop them in the sink. You'll wash them tomorrow.

She beams at you and starts unfolding the blanket.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who read this, left kudos or comments or what have you. You're awesome, and I appreciate the heck out of you. If this fic made you cry and you'd like to yell at me about it, please do so at [honorthevanishing](honorthevanishing.tumblr.com)


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